Sherman's March by Burke Davis

Author:Burke Davis
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781504034418
Publisher: Open Road Media

Mrs. St. Julien Ravenel, the wife of the director of the local army medical laboratory, had stayed behind with her six children and her elderly mother when her husband fled with his staff and supplies into North Carolina. She had been warned of the terrible punishment in store for Columbia, but refused to leave her home. Like many another victim of Sherman’s bummers, she never forgot nor forgave the plundering of her home during the Federal occupation—but she found the invaders the most gentlemanly brigands imaginable, even in their most terrifying actions.

At dusk, when the first soldiers pounded on her door, Mrs. Ravenel was assailed by crowds of “drunken, dancing, shouting, cursing wretches,” all carrying torches. It was a procession that ended only with the dawn: “A roaring stream of drunkards passed through the house, plundering and raging, and yet in a way curiously civil and refraining from personal insult.” The soldiers found little of Harriott Ravenel’s treasure, for she wore dozens of gold double eagle coins in a belt about her waist, and had buried almost five hundred silver dollars in her garden. And though they swore incessantly at every breath, the soldiers addressed Mrs. Ravenel as “lady,” even while they were rending apart everything they could not carry away. When Mrs. Ravenel stood quietly beside them as they fought over a trunk, the men turned away as if in shame.

Mrs. Ravenel’s mother, Mrs. Rutledge, sat through the night in a rocking chair, sewing without betraying the slightest sign of fear. “Old lady, why don’t you look scared?” one soldier asked. “Because I’m not.” He nodded approvingly and returned the scissors he had snatched from her.

“I’m sorry for the women and children,” one soldier said. “But South Carolina’s got to suffer. Got to be destroyed.”

Some of the men tried to burn the Ravenel house by tossing burning books on the porch or torches into closets, but did not persist when the women and children scurried to beat out the flames—“dreadfully fatiguing work,” Mrs. Ravenel said.

Mrs. Ravenel sent to General Frank Blair’s nearby headquarters to ask for a guard, but the servant returned with the message that General Blair “was very sorry, but was too sleepy to do anything.”

The Reverend P. J. Shand, the rector of Trinity Episcopal Church, driven from his home by the flames, carried out a trunk filled with the communion silver of the church. He and a servant were carrying the trunk and Mrs. Shand was with them when five soldiers surrounded them.

“Put it down. Whatcha got in there?”

“My church silver.”

“Give us the key.”

When Shand said he had no key, four of the soldiers banged at the chest and the other drew a pistol, grabbed the minister by the collar and demanded his watch.

“I have no watch.”

After being thoroughly searched, Shand was left in the street by the five, who disappeared with the trunk.

Young Emma LeConte and her mother were frightened by swarms of drunk soldiers staggering about the South Carolina College campus, cursing and singing such ribald songs that “we were forced to go indoors.

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